ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the opportunity to reflect on lessons learned from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) experience to date and how these lessons may guide its vision of the future in addressing the visible and invisible wounds suffered by children in armed conflict. UNICEF was created in December 1946 as a response of the world community to the devastating impact of World War II on children. Passing a conscious or unconscious message to a child to bury, hide, or "forget" painful memories and experiences, may serve adults and communities to ease their own forgetting. A child's traumatic memory may threaten an adult's sense of authority and power to provide safety and protection to children. The impact of trauma on children cannot be isolated from its impact on their families and communities. In refugee camps, mothers and siblings are raped, fathers accustomed to farming and working are standing in endless lines, humiliated and powerless to help themselves or their children.
